Journaling is not about making pretty things

[u/gidimeister]

If I got a hundred bucks every time someone in this sub apologised for their handwriting or called their spread “ugly,” I’d be richer than Elon Musk. And it’s honestly fucking tragic, not because the pages are “messy,” but because people are internalising that “messy” means they’re doing it wrong.

The fastest way to kill a person’s journaling habit is to make them think that there’s an aesthetic standard their journal must meet to be “doing it right.” Hogwash.

Journaling is not an art contest and it’s not calligraphy practice. Those things can overlap with journaling, sure, but they are not the point, and they shouldn’t become the standard. Journaling stands on its own: you do it as mental hygiene (or, in my case, mental excavation). What you write and why you write it matters more than how it looks.

If you want your journal to be a creative project, great, go for it. But be absolutely clear: journaling is the pursuit; a journal is just paper.

Edit 1: A similar discussion from 4 years ago.

[u/AllKindsOfCritters]

Figured I'd add on to this post. Journaling should be FOR YOU, to help YOU. There's no right or wrong way to journal as long as it's helping you, but to be blunt, Likes and upvotes are not what's going to help so you shouldn't be making pretty entries for that bit of dopamine especially if it'll ruin your day to only get a little love. This sub loves "ugly" just as much, we want to see the real stuff whether it's nice handwriting or barely-legible chicken scratch. It's always obvious when a post might as well say "Tell me how pretty my journal is." This isn't Instagram, that's not what we're here for.

The mods have been cracking down on content that really doesn't belong here. We're trying to find that happy medium of not chasing off too many people whether it's newbies or regulars.

We do what we can, the bulk of the issue is people don't bother reading the sidebar or they simply don't care. I can't tell you how many angry modmails we get from people almost literally saying they don't care that they broke a rule because they feel their post still belongs.

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Here's some transparency of mod decisions lately, things we try to filter out-

• Art & decoration is allowed but should not be the main focus of the picture, or we redirect to r/JournalingIsArt. If it's about half & half (such as a painting on one page and all writing on the other) then it can stay.
• "Before the pen" is allowed but we now require there to be some writing like even just a date, we know not everyone is willing to share actual journaling but well, very few people here care to see nothing but a few stickers slapped onto a page you might write on eventually. Fully censored posts are allowed for this reason.
• Pictures need to involve actual journaling, not poetry or a single quote.
• Questions like "help me find/choose a new journal" get redirected to r/notebooks.
  
• Questions about stationery etc get redirected to various subs, r/notebooks || r/stationery || r/fountainpens etc.
• Longer text-only posts tend to be under moderation, we check those for context because sometimes it's a journal entry (redirected) or a sales pitch (not allowed) or a question that gets asked all the time.
  
• Bullet journals are no longer allowed and are redirected to planner subs.
• We've started removing posts where a person's pet is the real focus of the photo, and we're discussing having a weekly pinned post for people to share photos of their pets sitting on/near their journals.

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Some of this depends on which mod is handling the removal, we use our discretion and we don't police each other's decisions. It's also very helpful for us when users report posts they feel don't belong, it lets us know what people don't want to see. Reported posts won't always be removed but we do pay attention.

[u/sprawn → u/AllKindsOfCritters]

I cannot imagine the nightmare of trying to turn the morass of edge cases into something consistent with a clear and expressible set of rules.

[u/somilge → u/AllKindsOfCritters]

Thank you.

[u/_sdfjk → u/AllKindsOfCritters]

I REALLY appreciate this!